By Kendra Hibbert
January 9, 2004
The New Year is upon us and rather than wax sentimental about the best and worst of the past 12 months I would rather use this time to list off my regrets and mistakes of the last year - that is name those books I should have/wanted to review but for whatever reason never got around to. It’s a big publishing world out there, folks, filled with thousands of forests of dead trees growing in size every day, I didn’t always have the time to seek out good books in the last 52 weeks, nor did I have the benefit of hindsight. Should I have dedicated an entire column to yet another horrible Star Wars book when I could have read say THE DA VINCI CODE (one of the top sellers of 2003)? Yes, a little research would have prevented this mistake but need I remind you that TATOOINE GHOST had a shiny cover on it and drew me in like a mosquito to the bug zapper.
So yes THE DA VINCI CODE is just one of my unread regrets this year. According to the back of the book this murder mystery follows Robert Langdon a Harvard symbologist
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(a career so strange it doesn’t even show up in spell-check) called in to help with the death of a Louvre curator whose body was found surrounded by clues leading to the works of Da Vinci. Tag-teaming with the gifted (and no doubt sexy) cryptologist Sophie Neveu the two discover this murder has ties to some of History’s most intriguing mysteries from the Mona Lisa to the Holy Grail. Apparently zaniness ensues. This would have been a perfect book to review the same column as (or even instead of) John Grisham’s THE KING OF TORTS but alas this enormously successful thriller by Dan Brown slipped past my radar at the beginning of the year only to be pushed aside when I finally became aware of it because, again, no shiny things on the cover.
Another big regret I have from the beginning of the year is missing Anthony Swofford’s JARHEAD: A MARINE’S CHRONICLE OF THE GULF WAR AND OTHER BATTLES. Featured on THE DAILY SHOW, NPR’s THIS AMERICAN LIFE and various CNN interviews Swofford’s revealing memoir of his time in the US Marines made him the perfect guest during the time when the media was desperate for commentary on its new mid-season replacement (a program I like to call ‘The War Show’). But again, though this would have made a great book to review for this column, I completely missed it. I can’t explain why or how I missed it, I just did. In fact, though I’d seen him in interviews before, it didn’t really click in that I should have reviewed his book until I happened to get an e-mail correspondence going with Chris Offut, author of CHUCK’S BUCKET a short story appearing in MCSWEENEY’S MAMMOTH TREASURY OF THRILLING TALES, who mentioned his cloned soldiers in that story derived their name ‘Swoffies’ from the JARHEAD author, who happens to be a friend of his.
Which brings up another regret of the past year – not reading SPEAK, COMMENTARY: THE BIG LITTLE BOOK OF FAKE DVD COMMENTARIES, WHEREIN WELL-KNOWN PUNDITS MAKE IMPASSIONED REMARKS ABOUT CLASSIC SCIENCE-FICTION FILMS – a book put out by McSweeney’s featuring ‘Unused’ commentary for popular Sci-fi films. Here’s an excerpt from Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn’s look at THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING:
“Chomsky: The film opens with Galadriel speaking. "The world has changed," she tells us, "I can feel it in the water." She's actually stealing a line from the non-human Treebeard. He says this to Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers, the novel. Already we can see who is going to be privileged by this narrative and who is not. “
You know if someone from McSweeney’s wanted to send me everything they publish in return for me being their personal quote whore, I wouldn’t mind. Here’s one for free – “McSweeney’s rocks the hizzy fo’ shizzy’. I also wouldn’t object if someone wanted to get me a subscription to McSweeney’s as a belated Christmas gift (ahem).
There are other politically charged books of the past year I regret not reading like MADAM SECRETARY: A MEMOIR by Madeleine Albright - a look back at Ms.Albright’s years as an Ambassador and Secretary of State. This book would have been perfectly paired with CRISIS: THE ANATOMY OF TWO MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY CRISES BASED ON THE RECORD OF HENRY KISSINGER’S HITHERTO SECRET TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS (thank God for self-explanatory titles saving me the trouble of thinking up long descriptions for these books). Alas I didn’t read these books, for one because, after attempting to read Hilary Clinton’s LIVING HISTORY, I realized I get bored with politics easily. For two I had a hard time getting review copies of these books sent to me. Maybe these publishers feel the words ‘politics’ and ‘poop shoot’ shouldn’t be seen together in the same sentence. I, however, feel these words have plenty in common.
Moving along, there were several ‘Book Club’ novels I skipped over entirely, not because I didn’t think the works would be any good, but mostly because I have a deep seated hatred for the ‘Book Club’ book. Nothing I can explain really - just an uncontrollable retching that occurs whenever I see that ‘silver star’ stamped onto the corner of a best-seller (even though it is a shiny thing). THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN NIGHT-TIME is one such regrettable misses of 2003. The novel by first-timer Mark Haddon is about an autistic 15-year old who tries to discover the real killer of his neighbor’s dog while simultaneously dealing with the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. The book, which incidentally is Today Show Book Club #13, would have been nicely teamed with THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN by Mitch Albom which, although doesn’t officially have a Book Club Stamp on it yet, includes a chapter that calls for the protagonist Eddie to encounter five people in heaven who were influential in his life. This novel is just screaming for Oprah to put it on her Book Club list. It also vaguely A CHRISTMAS CAROL-esque and anyone who read last column will realise that’s not a good thing for me.
There were several offerings in the Sci-Fi/Horror genre I neglected to accept - most notably Stephen King’s THE WOLVES OF CALLA and Anne Rice’s BLOOD CANTICLE. Again, I really don’t have an excuse for not reading these books, I just can’t bring myself to read any more Stephen King and Anne Rice suffers by association in my mind.
Two Sci-Fi/Fantasy books I do regret not reading this year are Neal Stephenson’s QUICKSILVER (THE BAROQUE CYCLE, VOL. 1) and Christopher Paolini’s ERAGON (INHERITANCE BOOK 1). Stephenson’s book is especially one I really wanted to read, especially after writing about SNOW CRASH in part 4 of my RETRO SCI-FI SUMMER column, but couldn’t fit it into my reviewing schedule. ERAGON is another book I missed reading this year which made waves in the media as it was written by a young kid, just 15 when he started the book and already a best selling author. Fortunately I do have time to make up for my mistakes as both of these selections are the first in a projected series and I can always just pick them up when the seconds come out.
Lastly, my biggest un-reviewed regrets of 2003 were left out of the column mostly because I’m really unsure of how much I’m willing to show the public of my biggest
nerdy obsessions. Bill Bryson’s A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING is the one book I would have loved to have reviewed this year, but couldn’t fit in. While it’s no A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME Bryson’s look at scientific history from The Big Bang to dinosaurs to the shifting of Teutonic plates is a thoroughly informative handbook on space and time and space-time no geek should be without. Also released this year was a reprint of the best-selling THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE: SUPERSTRINGS, HIDDEN DIMENSIONS, AND THE QUEST FOR THE ULTIMATE THEORY written by Brian Greene, the reissue put out to coincide with the Nova Special that came out earlier this year (and soon to be available on DVD in a few weeks time, a release I’m eagerly anticipating – that’s just how nerdy I am). Greene does have another book THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS coming out in February which I may subject you all to a review of, depending on how hard it is for me to get my hands on a copy.
So there it is - 2003 - much like every other year full of regrets, missed opportunities and unwise decisions that only nostalgia brought on by the selective memory that clicks on in about 5 years will ‘restore’ to a time of innocence and wonder. But for now one can only hope and look forward to the brand new selection of regrets, missed opportunities and unwise decisions 2004 will bring – and wonder where all the flying cars are.
Next Column: Two books I can pretty safely predict I will *not* regret reading, Robert A. Heinlein’s lost first novel FOR US, THE LIVING : A COMEDY OF CUSTOMS and THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD GUIDE TO ECCENTRIC AND DISCREDITED DISEASES featuring contributions by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman among others.
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